Pages

Saturday, March 7, 2015

My run training has taken a little swerve since I’ve written my
last post.

The weekend after I wrote my last post, I did a 2 hour tempo
run. Post workout, I started to feel some pain in my big toe. Because a long
career in triathlon depends upon a healthy body, I don’t mess around with this
stuff, EVER, even if it feels like a little issue. From my own experience, I
know that if I wait to deal with an oncoming injury, sometimes for only one
more workout, my entire season can be put in jeopardy. I immediately started my
injury recovery protocol which involves: 1.) immediately texting my coach about
what I’m feeling and what happened; 2.) using ibuprofen to decrease any
swelling in the area; 3.) foam rolling 4.) keeping my legs up even more than
normal; 5.) making an appointment with Dr. AJ, my chiro who specializes in
sports injury; 6.) not running until I’m completely confident that I can run
injury free and not re-injure the issue. The rest of the afternoon involved the
couch.

Back to Running... in the Heat of Venice, FL!

The next day, I walked into Dr. AJ’s office. Before I continue,
I should say that I’ve been working with Dr. AJ for over a year on injury
prevention and, when I need it, injury rehabilitation. Over this time, he’s
learned to know my body like a great jockey knows his race horse. AJ has an instinctual
way of knowing when my training is easy and I’m working hard, when my body is ready to
race and when it needs some work. Physically, he keeps me tuned up and
ready to work hard. Mentally, he reminds me that training is hard and that I’m
constantly breaking down and building up my muscles. He reminds me that I’m not a
God and that my body needs continual maintenance in order for me to perform at
my best. The relationship we’ve developed has been invaluable and proved to be
again with this issue.

As always, AJ listened attentively to my story about
training, the emerging foot pain, and my concern that it might be a stress
fracture. He explained to me that a lot of foot problems, especially when the
pain is on the top of the foot, are often routed in tight calf’s. It never
ceases to amaze me how often pain in one area is caused by a different area in
the body. He ran some tests to check if that was the case. We found that my
calf’s were tighter than normal and AJ reassured me that we could really
improve the issue. He went to work. After a couple of sessions of Active Release Technique on my calf and Graston technique on my foot, the issue dissolved
away.

At the same time I was working out the injury with AJ, I kept
Cliff up to date so that he could make the proper modifications to my training
schedule. He reassured me that I was doing all the right things and he backed
off my run training for the following week. This, I think, is what great
coaches do. They know when and how to
divert from the original plan. They also know how to keep an extremely
motivated athlete at bay until the time is right to unleash him once again. As
that extremely motivated athlete, I can say that it helps to have someone
confirm that it is the right time to back off. I’m always removing myself from
the pain involved with training hard and it’s often a mental challenge to back
off, especially when I’m in a great rhythm and feel like I’m making big gains
in training every single day. There may be a few circumstance where you push
through an injury for a little while, but these cases are far and few between.
This was certainly not the time in my season to push the limits. We backed off
and took it one step at a time.

More Running near the Condo in FL

For my first run back after about a week of no run training,
Cliff suggested that I do a 5 minute warm up walk followed by 4x (5 minute jog,
2 minute walk). I got through the second 5 minute jog portion and felt good,
but my confidence in my calf began to wane. I cut the workout there, believing
that I’d rather play it safe and cut the workout when I was feeling good. This was
a hard decision for me to make. In the past I would have just pushed on to
avoid the guilt that comes with not completing a given workout, despite the knowledge that I could possibly re-injure myself. After that workout
I had no pain, but I’m confident I made the
right decision to cut that initial run short.

Lower Run Vol = Increased Swim Work!

Cliff began to build the run training up slowly over the
course of two weeks and I’m almost back to my normal run volume again. I’m
really happy with the way I took control of the situation and skirted the issue
before it became a much bigger deal.

I spent the last week in Davenport, FL with Amber's family, training, going to the beach, and visiting the parks. I’m looking forward to some longer runs in
the next two weeks in Tuscan, AZ as I train at Cliff’s CEC pro camp!